Taking Measures to Save Energy

Posted on Jul 1, 2015

Central Valley residents are being asked to reduce electricity use between 2pm and 9pm because high temperatures increase the demand for power and not enough is being generated, especially when it’s overcast.

“We are going to see less production from solar both on customers homes and our utility scale solar, so that’s gonna reduce the amount of electricity available but there’s still that need because of the heat,” Denny Boyles said.

Flex alerts also keep the utility company from putting more polluting power into production, an approach solar panel users are also taking to save the environment.

“That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to have this car port in the parking lot, we thought it set a good example for our community and we wanted for our community to know that we care about the environment,” Adam Knudson said.

Wednesday solar panels were installed on the parking lot and on top of the recreation center to save energy and money. Hope Lutheran Church had been paying at least $ 4,000 a month for electricity during the Summer.

“It allows you to change the structure of paying PG&E for the electricity and instead sending power back to the utility company. It allows you to lock in your cost for electricity at today’s rates,” Andres Roldan said. He also said a lot more people want to install solar panels during the Summer but if you can’t take that approach, the California Independent System Operator asks you to use less power.

“If you can reduce thermostat to 78, all measures that will help reduce electricity consumption and also prevent the possibility of blackouts,” Denny Boyles said.